Withdrawal Symptoms and the Type A Personality

Caution: There will be some whining in this post I apologize in advance.

After yesterday’s post on how well I was doing, (I even printed out a full scale copy of the ostrich and hung it up) I had a massive withdraw attack last night and today. Here I am on the crescendo of 2 weeks and WHAM…I get handed the slap in the face reminder that’s its far from over. Why?

Of course a majority of it is the physical addiction which includes some side issues that are also becoming quite nagging. Again I thought I was over these but apparently not—I guess I have always been a late bloomer. The newest one is the inability to sleep or at least sleep restfully. The past few days I have been up until 1-2AM and then wake up at 6 or so. This of course is adding to the irritability factor and the littlest thing sets me off. The headaches are worsening but are still manageable. And the answer that keeps plugging away is to have the smoke and everything will be okay. What is surprising though is the weight issue. Instead of gaining which is the traditional result, I keep on losing. I started out this summer at about 168 and weighed myself this AM and was surprised to see I am down to about 153. I don’t get that one unless it deals with the other issue to follow.

I suspect part of the problem is the Type A personality. By type A I refer to those that are control freaks…myself included. We are/want to be/or think that we are in control of everything in our lives. We run our lives in a certain way that reflects this. For example, for me it was spending time in the military which is of course the perfect location for the Type A personality especially if you are an officer. When I retired in 2001, I thought that that part of my life was behind me but it really wasn’t. I loaded myself down with new responsibilities and marched forward and I was still in control—no fate or predetermined destiny was going to intervene or change that—nope!

To the point, this type of personality is extremely volatile when they are not in control. I know that I cannot handle things that do not flow as they should…I need to tame or arrange them in a certain way to manage them. So now—when both the physical and mental aspects of my body are in revolt, I am completely without control and that frankly just sucks. When type A’s find themselves in these situations, and of course this applies to a wide variety of issues dealing with life beyond smoking or similar addictions, we tend to screw things up. I for one am an expert at this. I either clam up completely and just batten down the hatches and isolate (oh I could tell you stories) or I tend to not even bother putting a shoe on my right foot because it will undoubtedly spend most of its time in my mouth. I have mastered the first reaction and am now working on the second.

I have discovered one thing though…it is possible to change or at least keep the type A in check. It’s hard but possible. The mind and its configuration has to be rewired some which of course leads to a new outlook on things. And some of those are scary too—it’s a big leap and the fall is quite menacing. My daughter once said to me that she wishes that she could accomplish as much as I have in my life. My type A answer to that was that was what life was all about—the accomplishments and I would continue to do so until I died. I have begun to rethink that answer to…well maybe that philosophy is okay as long as you don’t ignore the important things that go along with those accomplishments—like living. I’m trying babe...